Our live coverage of Sen. John McCain’s week of memorials has concluded. For more on McCain’s life and impact, visit CNN Politics.
The motorcade carrying Sen. John McCain’s casket just departed the National Cathedral to applause from people who had lined the streets outside.
Underlining the politics of the moment, and point of some of the tributes offered inside, McCain’s hearse passed one person who held a sign hailing McCain as a “POW hero” and President Trump a “coward.”
Tomorrow, a private service will take place at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and then McCain’s body will be laid to rest in the US Naval Academy Cemetery.
This follows a week of memorials from Phoenix to Washington, D.C.
The American opera singer Renee Fleming, who told CNN she was “so incredibly touched” to get the request to sing at Sen. John McCain’s memorial, just delivered a powerfully emotional rendition of “Danny Boy.”
His daughter Meghan and wife Cindy were both clearly moved, looking on with tears in their eyes, as Fleming sang the lyrics:
Fleming told us of the song: “It’s so beautiful, and ‘my dreams will warm and sweeter be.’ It’s an incredibly beautiful lyric. And there’s a lot of people who say it’s their favorite song and it never fails to make them weep.”
Watch the moment:
The next portion of Sen. John McCain’s memorial service will be more traditional, as friends and family read from the bible, the choir sings hymns, and members of the clergy offer prayers.
The American opera singer Renee Fleming will sing “Danny Boy,” as per Sen. John McCain’s direct request.
Former President Barack Obama spoke of the present moment, where “so much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty. Trafficking in bombast and insult. Phony controversies and manufactured outrage. It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough, but in fact is born of fear.”
McCain, Obama said, “called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”
Obama added: “What better way to honor John McCain’s life of service than as best we can follow his example to prove that the willingness to get in the arena and fight for this country is not reserved for the few, it is open to all of us, and in fact it is demanded of all of us as citizens of this great republic.”
Concluding his remarks, Obama added, “That’s perhaps how we honor him best, by recognizing that there are some things bigger than party or ambition or money or fame or power, that there are some things that are worth risking everything for. Principles that are eternal. Truths that are abiding.”
“At his best,” Obama said, “John showed us what that means. For that, we are all deeply in his debt.”
The former president walked out from behind the podium and into the open arms of Cindy McCain, and the two briefly embraced as she appeared to thank him for his remarks.
President Obama, who defeated Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, said he and President Bush were “among the fortunate few who competed against John at the highest levels of politics” and said, like Bush, that McCain made him better.
Speaking of the day McCain asked he speak at his memorial, Obama said it was “a precious and singular honor” and that when McCain called with the request, “I’ll admit sadness and also a certain surprise.”
But Obama also realized how well it captured some of John’s essential qualities: Unpredictability. Contrarianism. Non-conformity.
“It also showed John’s disdain for self-pity. He had been to hell and back and yet somehow never lost his energy or his optimism or his zest for life,” Obama said.
President George W. Bush said whatever rivalry he had with Sen. John McCain “melted away” as they forged a friendship.
“Back in the day, he could frustrate me. And I know he’d say the same thing about me. But he also made me better,” Bush said delivering the eulogy for his former 2000 Republican primary rival.
Bush recalled how he and McCain spoke of that “intense period like football players, remembering a big game.”
“In the process rivalry melted away,” Bush told the crowd of mourners gathered at the National Cathedral. “In the end, I got to enjoy one of life’s great gifts, the friendship of John McCain. And I’ll miss it.”
“John was above all a man with a code. He lived by a set of public virtues that brought strength and purpose to his life and to his country,” Bush said, adding that McCain was “honest no matter whom it offended.
“Presidents were not spared. He was honorable. Always recognizing that his opponents were still patriots and human beings.”
Watch:
One figure who was notably absent from Saturday’s event: President Donald Trump, with whom McCain frequently feuded and whom he did not want to attend his memorial services.
Instead, Trump is visiting one of his golf courses in Sterling, Virginia, and has tweeted throughout this morning’s service about unrelated topics, including trade negotiations with Canada.
The White House has not said what the President will do there, including whether he plans to tune into any of Sen. McCain’s memorial service.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave his tribute at Sen. John McCain’s service, and said that the US “has had the good fortune, that, at times of national trial, a few great personalities have emerged” and “John McCain was one of those gifts of destiny.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-Independent, said that in 2008 John McCain “had a far out idea of asking a Democrat to be his running mate”///:/// him.
Lieberman said: “When he first talked to me about it, I said, ‘You know, John, I’m really honored, but I don’t see how you can do it. Even though I won my last election as an independent, I’m still a registered Democrat.’” McCain’s was “direct and really ennobling,” Lieberman said.
“That’s the point, Joe,” McCain told him. “You’re a Democrat, I’m a Republican. We could give our country the bipartisan leadership it needs for a change.”
Ultimately, McCain chose Sarah Palin, and the rest is history.
The prospect of a Lieberman VP pick raised concerns among conservatives, CNN reported at the time.
Lieberman, an independent senator who was the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, had been a vocal supporter of the war in Iraq, but he backed abortion rights.
Conservative activists feared at the time that if McCain picked him, it could drive away social conservatives who were already uneasy about his nomination.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, John McCain’s longtime friend who was nearly a former running mate, said speaking today was one of the greatest honors of his life.
He spoke of hearing McCain tell people that there was a “special satisfaction that comes from serving a cause greater than yourself,” and that it was a creed he lived by.
“The greater cause to which he devoted his life was America, not so much the country defined by its borders, but the America of our founding values, freedom, human rights, opportunity, democracy, and equal justice under law,” Lieberman said.
“In John’s life, he nobly served and advanced these American values, and remarkably his death seems to have reminded the American people that these values are what make us a great nation,” he added. “Not the tribal partisanship, personal attack politics that have recently characterized our life.”
The week of memorials celebrating McCain’s life, Lieberman said, has lifted the country “above all that.”
Meghan McCain, speaking at her father’s memorial ceremony in Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral, gave a forceful rebuke to the rhetoric coming out of the White House just a few miles away, defining the America of John McCain as one that is generous and welcoming, modest yet strong – and already great.
“The America of John McCain is, yes, the America of Vietnam, fighting the fight, even in the most grim circumstances, even in the most distant, hostile corner of the world, standing for the life and liberty of other peoples in other lands,” McCain said.
“The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She’s resourceful, confident, secure. She meets her responsibilities. She speaks quietly because she’s strong. America does not boast because she has no need to. The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.”
The bipartisan crowd of dignitaries applauded.
Watch the powerful moment:
Meghan McCain, speaking through tears at her father’s memorial service at Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral, said that the family, friends, as well as current and former leaders were gathered there to “mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”
“He was a great fire who burned bright,” McCain continued, adding that she and her family had heard from many in the past several days who “stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminated what’s best about them.”
“We are grateful to them because they’re grateful to him,” she said.
And to his critics: “A few have resented that fire, for the light it cast upon them for the truth it revealed about their character. But my father never cared what they thought, and even that small number still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up to the example of John McCain.”
Watch:
“I am here before you today saying the words I have never wanted to say, giving the speech, I have never wanted to give, feeling the loss I have never wanted to feel,” she said at its opening. “My father is gone.”
Friends, family and former presidents gathered this morning at Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of the late Sen. John McCain. The ceremony is beginning now.
Here are the moments to expect:
The three former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, joined by former first ladies Michelle Obama, Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton (a former senator, secretary of state, and Democratic nominee for president herself), are sitting in the first pew as the ceremony begins.
Former vice presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney are there, too.
Bush and Obama will give remarks.
Sen. John McCain arrived at National Cathedral this morning just before 9:45 a.m. ET, and his casket was removed from the hearse and walked up the steps by honor guard members as his family solemnly looked on. Their hands were over their hearts.
Sen. John McCain’s staff provided the following list of notable attendees expected to attend this morning’s service. It includes a number of current and former US leaders, current and foreign leaders, and at least seven POWs:
Current and Former U.S. Leaders:
Current and Former Foreign Leaders:
POWs:
Cindy McCain laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial this morning in honor of her late husband, Sen. John McCain. McCain, and other members of the McCain family, are making their way to the National Cathedral for the funeral service now.
Watch:
Friends, family and former presidents will gather at Washington National Cathedral this morning to honor the life of the late Sen. John McCain.
The ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m. ET, will feature tributes from Republican former President George W. Bush, who prevailed over McCain in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, and Democratic former President Barack Obama, who ran against McCain in the 2008 presidential election and won.
The remarks from former Democratic and Republican presidents who were once rivals to McCain will send an unmistakable message of unity and bipartisanship at a time when Washington is deeply divided.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Meghan McCain, one of the late senator’s daughters, are also on the list of those slated to speak at Saturday’s memorial service.
Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden, who delivered an emotional eulogy for McCain at a memorial service in Arizona on Thursday, will serve as a pallbearer on Saturday.
Actor Warren Beatty, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, former Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and former chief of staff to McCain Mark Salter will also serve as pallbearers, among others.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close friend of McCain’s, and McCain’s children Jimmy and Sidney McCain will take part in the ceremony as well.
